United States v. The Amistad

United States v. The Amistad was a US Supreme Court case resulting from a slave uprising aboard the Spanish schooner Amistad in July 1839. The captives aboard the Amistad had been illegally kidnapped from Sierra Leone and were taken to Cuba for sale; they rebelled and killed the captain and the cook before making land near Long Island, New York. After the slave ship Tecora was caught illegally transporting slaves (in violation of the Slave Trade Act 1807), abolitionists argued that the slaves had no other option but to rebel to escape their illegal confinement, and President Martin Van Buren decided that the Afriacn slaves on the Amistad shouldl be freed and allowed to return to Africa. In 1842, the Africans returned to Africa with some American Protestant missionaries.